Cleaning Frenzy
 

I spent the last four days cleaning my sewing room. I bought two more tall bookcases on sale at Staples, moved furniture and reorganized everything. I can now easily move around my room without injury!!!!

I inherited my mom's stash when she passed away over a year ago and had tons of my own kits and fabric, so I could never find anything. I now have it all integrated and reorganized by project for some stuff and color for other stuff. I gave away three huge boxes of yarn, craft projects and home dec stuff to my neighbor's mother. She semi supports herself with crafts esp crochet. I don't enjoy and know I will not be using these, so I gave them to her. She was thrilled and so was I to have the space.

I was shocked at the amount of fabric and patterns I have for garments, dolls etc. I need to get going on that. I used to love sewing for the grands, but in recent years couldn't even find the stuff I needed even though I knew I had purchased zippers etc. Now I can easily find just what I need.

My final project is to go through the huge pile of patterns I tore out of magazines. Yes I went through every issue and tore out what I wanted to save then tossed the rest. I have several large binders and those clear sleeves to put each project in. I'm making one binder of stash buster style quilts, one of applique and one of challenging traditional quilts. The fourth will be kids, holiday etc.

When I went to bed Saturday night I could hardly wiggle, but all the hard part was done. My hubby was shocked at the change in the room. He was gone half the day helping one of the kids, so all he saw was the mess after we moved the old bookcase and sewing table. When he came home most of the mess was cleaned up. Thankfully he never saw the huge stash of fabric. My goodness do I know how to buy fabric and patterns. I don't need to make any further purchases for years. The best part? I now feel so excited to work on quilting again.

Know the feeling ...............have small quaters and have to move every ......redo space every once in a while..........just keep on quilting ;):thumbup:

Congratulation of your reorganization. It sure feels great to be able to put you hands on what you want and know you have. It gives you more incentive to do things. Have fun with the new space and projects.

Congratulation on all your HARD work. Pat yourself on the back!

You are a inspiration to the rest of us that need/should do the same thing. ;)

Congrats , but post pics please, if you can.

Great job getting your room ready to work in!

it's a great feeling to have a clean and organized sewing room. I am known to rearrange periodically, to reorganize a mess or just because I like a change. My sweetie hates it when I get out the measuring tape because it usually means he is going to have some furniture to move.

Ahh ... Now that feels good to have a nice organized room, doesn't it? It is a hard thing to force myself to staighten up weekly, but, I do love having it all where I can find it.

On a sader note, I am so very sorry to hear of the loss of your mother. Bless your heart, that was a great loss.

Awesome, great job!!!

Isn't it the greatest feeling to have an organized sewing room? I recently cleaned mine out - even the closet, which was full of clothes and now has huge rubbermaid tubs of fabric and rag doll and teddy bear parts in it. But, I've been very sick since Feb.1 and have been ordering online like crazy and everything that comes in the mail and UPS I stack on my ironing board and I know that I am going to have to find a place for all of it when I'm better. Nothing makes you feel better than new fabric in the mail.

I did that a while ago and now my issue is to keep it nice. Congratulations on your achievement. Happy Quilting!

Sounds like you are doing a great job.

You might want to consider scanning all that paper patterns, etc from magazines and books them putting them on a flash drive. Will save a ton of space. I put mine in files: #1 with just the finished photos and #2 with the finished photos and directions. I even separated the sewing from the quilting so I could find the different things quicker.

I donated my magazines to my local quilt group which sold them, and a lot of others, at our local quilt expo and made $1000!

You are an inspiration. I have been wanting to do that, but just keep putting it off. I have to clean houses the next 3 days, but then I have 4 to do as I please. Think Fri. would be a good day to start! Yep! Im doing it. Friday it is!!

Would you you come over and do mine. You are an inspiration, especially the "without injury part.'lol

Sounds like you are rejuvenated with your area to work in. Congrats!

Want to come and do mine??????

Thanks for all the encouragement. I needed fabric for the guild BOM today and went right to the flat tote where I had reds and pulled it out. I cut what I needed, refolded and returned it. Won't go through that clean up again!!!!

On my fabric I divided the whole stash into half yard or less and larger pieces. I arranged the refolded pieces in flat totes (the style you can slide under a bed) acc to color. I ended up with two totes of small pieces esp lots of fat quarters. I roughly divided acc to cool colors and warm colors so I would know where to look. On middle size pieces such as a yard or two I measured and attached a sticky note with a small safety pin so I would know how much was in the packet and ended up with two more totes. Finally the large pieces I arranged on shelves again with a note of yardage. Most of these were three plus yards so enough for borders or pieced backs. When I saw it all together I could really see ideas for several quilts. My goal is to use all of it up except a small stash then to only buy a project at a time. Fortunately I am good at finishing before I start a new project.

Congrats on taking the time to make your space more enjoyable and efficient. I enjoyed reading your post.

What an accomplishment! It's fun to be so excited and fired up! I also wanted to compliment you on your excellent sense of timing with your DH, haha. :-)

Congratulations on your organization project! About a year ago I sorted through all my fabric and purchased clear 8.5 X14" totes at Wal-mart (only one color is in each tote). I store the totes in a large shelving unit my husband made years ago for the kids toys. I recently sorted through all the totes again and gave anything that was a yard or less and had been stored for a long time to Good Will. I got rid of left over fabrics from things I sewed for my grandchildren. Before this I had a MASSIVE DISORGANIZED MESS. I also sorted through all the clothing patterns and gave away anything that was smaller than what the kids could wear now. I am giving a huge garbage bag of old sewing and quilting books that I have not looked at in years to a friend who wants to start sewing. The total was about 6 large garbage bags of old fabric! I now have empty totes to fill!

All this info has inspired me to finish organizing my sewing room...I can't say I have too much fabric..just not enough space.

great! now can you come over and do mine?? lol!!

Clements: Doesn't it feel good to have an organized stash ? Well till the first time you go back into sew!~LOL At least that is what I have found out .. LOL .. But it is still nice to have that "moment" of sanity !LOL Congrats on the organization; being able to give things away and just general purpose!

Good for you. I am "gearing up" to do the same thing!!!

I've been working on cleaning up my sewing room and getting organized also. I have all my fabric on stainless steel shelving and wow do I have alot. I've been getting rid of some fabric that I know I will never make anything out of and old patterns also. I did sell alot of stuff at my guilds annual sale but bot stuff too so I guess is evened itself out. LOL.

Congratulations on your Cleaning Frenzy...WOW how awesome it feels!! I have been in the same frenzy for the past month and now my sewing room is in great shape, so I too have that awesome feeling. I finished about 4 UFO projects and that has added to my satisfaction. Now can't wait to get back to new projects. Enjoy yours!!

Congrats on your reorganizing effort. It's something I need to do, but when we moved I tried to be organized, gave away nearly half my fabric stash, my husband wanted me to get rid of more, but I refused. So, I have lots of plastic totes with fabrics, fleece, batting, etc., but I'm slowly getting it organized. We moved from a 3-bedroom house to a 2-bedroom apt. 2 1/2 years ago, but I'm behind on organizing. Last year at this time I fell, ruptured the C-4-5 disks in my neck, could not use my arms or legs, had spinal surgery, then spent over 4 months in therapy before I could come home - using a walker. I'm proud to say that now I just use a cane for walking and late last summer I decided that I could try driving again, took a couple turns around the parking lot and have been driving ever since. My husband is disabled and can't drive, so to say I got a severe case of cabin fever is an understatement. However, I have slowly been using up my stash, even though a therapist at the nursing home gave me 40 yards of fabric that had been given to her and hadn't used. So I added 40 yards of fabric to my stash, but I only buy fabric now when I need it to finish up a project or when making something special for my DGD. Thank God for quilting - it saved my sanity when I could finally start quilting again, then I did a craft fair and got more $ for fabric. Now I have to get ready for a fair in June, so more of my stash will disappear. It's nice to condense the totes and free up more totes, plus the best part is the quilting. I'm so much happier now and not the grouch I was for so long last year. Sewing has been my therapy and it's gotten me through some tough times.

Good job everyone!! My favorite go to tool for organizing is a label maker. Every time I need to organize an area of my home, which has been a lot lately, I grab my label maker so I can easily see where my items are. It always seems like I can find anything in a mess but organize it and I can't find a thing!!! LOL!! Any other helpful hints out there???

You are an inspiration. I want to have another machine I have up and be able to use it. I keep looking around in here and cannot figure out how to manage this. I have too much stuff in a small room. Good for you. I want to see a picture please.

Clements, please accept my condolences on the loss of your mother a year ago. I am so happy that you have been able to secure storage cases for your entire sewing area. You have put a great deal of planning details in action that anyone on this board could use successfully. Thank you for being so generous in sharing your process and accomplishments. This has been an inspiration! Blessings to you....

Great job on organizing your quilting/sewing supplies and space!! I have mine pretty well organized and I keep my sewing space pretty neat. I like to keep it that way. It makes it easier to find what I need.
I should do that with my magazines and printed up patterns, those are not quite so "organized"

Good for you!